Warchha Sandstone
Early Permian (Artinskian)
Part of Nilawahan Group
Permian in the time scale →Cited in 9 sources Last reviewed Jul 30, 2026
- Rank
- Not recorded
- Status
- Published
- Age
- Paleozoic · Permian · CisuralianEarly Permian (Artinskian)
- Named by
- Not recorded
- Type locality
- Warcha, Salt Range32.6628°N, 72.6939°E
- Thickness
- 30 m (eastern Salt Range) to 155 m (western Salt Range)
- Lithology
- Sandstone, shale with speckled appearance
- Synonyms
- Speckled Sandstone; Warchha Group (part); Warcha Formation
A Permian red-bed sandstone deposited by high-sinuosity meandering rivers with broad floodplains; its speckled sandstone is a distinctive marker in the Nilawahan Group.
Named after Warcha in Salt Range. Post-glacial marine transgressive sequence. Speckled sandstone is distinctive marker horizon. Dandot Formation is a junior synonym. Part of the Nilawahan Group.
Fossils
Contacts
Band colour = period; texture = dominant rock type. Lines between bands mark the contact type; dotted = no contact recorded in the sources (not a claim of conformity). True scale makes height ∝ recorded thickness; hatched = thickness not recorded. Ages approximate, for ordering.
This unit (highlighted) within its province column; faded ends continue above and below. Line style marks the contact type.
Distribution & setting
- Basin
- Not recorded
- Region
- Not recorded
- Depositional environment
- fluvial, coastal, estuarine
- Coordinates
- 32.6628°N, 72.6939°E
Correlation
Not recorded. Compare this unit against other basins on the correlation panel →
Economic significance
The arkosic 'speckled sandstone' hosts sub-economic sedimentary copper, lead and tin shows northeast of Mianwali and north of Nilawahan Gorge — copper as chalcopyrite and malachite, tin as stannite, cassiterite and native tin — and carries local poor-quality coal seams. Preliminary trench sampling (~300 samples in 15 trenches; Gilani 1981) was not encouraging and base-metal potential is rated low.
Remarks
A fluvial sandstone deposited by meandering, avulsion-prone rivers on the northern margin of Gondwana; detailed facies-architecture and provenance studies make it one of the best-documented Permian fluvial successions of the Salt Range.
Research notes (5)
Field-by-field findings drawn from the cited literature. Every statement is traced to a registered source — follow a citation for the full reference.
Age & correlation (2)
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CORRECTION — Ghazi et al. (2012), full text: the Warchha Sandstone is ARTINSKIAN (Balme 1970; Wardlaw & Pogue 1995, on pollen-spores), not Sakmarian as previously recorded. It unconformably overlies the Sakmarian Dandot Formation and is unconformably overlain by the Kungurian Sardhai Formation (or, in the eastern Salt Range, by Palaeocene strata).
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Kazmi & Jan (1997): the Warchha Sandstone (Early Permian, by position between the Dandot and Sardhai formations; type Warchha Nala) is 150–165 m (120 m Khisor Range) of thick-bedded reddish-brown cross-bedded arkosic sandstone with purple/grey shale — a fluviatile alluvial-flat deposit, conformable on the Dandot and transitional up into the Sardhai; unfossiliferous.
Kazmi, A.H. & Jan, M.Q. (1997)
Thickness (1)
-
Ghazi et al. (2012): the Warchha Sandstone thickens systematically from 30 m in the east to 155 m in the west of the Salt Range outcrop belt. A high-sinuosity meandering-fluvial to coastal/estuarine sandstone (former 'speckled sandstone', Waagen 1878); correlates with the Barakar Formation (India).
Type locality & location (1)
-
Type section relocated to Matan (72°41'38"E, 32°39'46"N = 32.6628, 72.6939) with a reference section at Karuli (72°41'32"E, 32°37'40"N), as proposed by Ghazi et al. (2012) — the historical 'Warchha Gorge' type locality (Fatmi 1973; Shah 1977) was given without coordinates. Supersedes the earlier Warcha-village point.
Sources (8)
- Malkani, M.S. & Mahmood, Z. (2017). Stratigraphy of Pakistan. Geological Survey of Pakistan, Memoir Vol. 24.
- OpenStreetMap contributors and GEOnet Names Server (public geographic gazetteers), used to geolocate named GSP type localities to approximate decimal coordinates.
- Shah, S.M.I. (1977). Stratigraphy of Pakistan. Geological Survey of Pakistan, Memoir Vol. 12.
- Ghazi, S. & Mountney, N.P. (2009). Facies and architectural element analysis of a meandering fluvial succession: The Permian Warchha Sandstone, Salt Range, Pakistan. Sedimentary Geology, 221(1-4), 99-126.
- Ghazi, S., Mountney, N.P., Butt, A.A. & Sharif, S. (2012). Stratigraphic and palaeoenvironmental framework of the Early Permian sequence in the Salt Range, Pakistan. Journal of Earth System Science, 121(5), 1239-1255.
- Indian Plate Lexicon (indplex.geolex.org), Geological Society of India and international compilation.
- Drewes, H., Ahmad, Z. & Khan, R. (2007). Resource Evaluation of Selected Minerals and Industrial Commodities of the Potwar Plateau Area, Northern Pakistan. Chapter H of Regional Studies of the Potwar Plateau Area, Northern Pakistan (P.D. Warwick & B.R. Wardlaw, eds.), U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 2078-H, 22 p.
- Kazmi, A.H. & Jan, M.Q. (1997). Geology and Tectonics of Pakistan. Graphic Publishers, Karachi.
Reviewer confidence: high
Every fact on this page is source-cited. This entry is part of the peer-archived Pakistan Stratigraphy Dataset (doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21363991, CC‑BY‑4.0).
Lexicon status: Name attested in the Shah (1977/2009) Geological Survey of Pakistan compilation — the national stratigraphic lexicon. This records where the name is documented; it is not an endorsement of the unit’s definition, age or figures.
Cite this unit
Qudsi, L. (2026). Warchha Sandstone. In Pakistan Stratigraphy Dataset [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21363991
@misc{stratigraphypk_warchaformation,
author = {Qudsi, Lareb},
title = {{Warchha Sandstone} --- Pakistan Stratigraphy Dataset},
year = {2026},
publisher = {Zenodo},
doi = {10.5281/zenodo.21363991},
url = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21363991}
} Archived dataset: doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21363991 (CC‑BY‑4.0) · Direct link to this entry: https://stratigraphy.pk/formation/warcha-formation (accessed October 29, 2026).
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